From the Forums: Jessica Alba or Alicia Keys, x86 Windows Phones and suggestions

It's that time again, folks. More discussions pulled from our ever expanding and growing Windows Phone community. If you've not been 100% with it these past handful of days then fear not as we have you covered. The forum is constantly a busy place, which isn't a bad thing, but it can prove difficult to keep up with everything that's currently going on. So what's being discussed?

First up is the inevitable Jessica Alba versus Alicia Keys. The former helping represent mums with Windows Phone, while the latter takes on a role at BlackBerry to help push the brand out and drum up custom through the media. Which is better suited for the job? Well, we'll let the following photo from the BlackBerry 10 launch help you decide:

Awkward, much? We've got to hand it to BlackBerry though, they sure know how to pull in well-known faces, and it doesn't get much better than Alicia Keys. That said, the presentation did seem rather awkward. While Keys went through exactly what her role would be at the company, we couldn't help but view Jessica Alba's position with Microsoft as slightly more effective. But it's early days and we'll have to see how things turn out.

Forum member Saint Michael asked the question: Jessica Alba or Alicia Keys? Which do you prefer so far, and do you believe Alicia really does have the capabilities to help BlackBerry out? Add your thoughts in the "Jessica Alba vs Alicia Keys" thread.

Would anyone go for an actual x86 Windows 8Phone?

Intel is rumoured to be looking into Windows Phone development with an engineer job posting being viewed by many as signs of interest from the company. Unfortunately, we have little to go on and aren't too sure what this all means. Forum user tomatoes11 has an idea:

"It says that intel is looking into developing a x86 Windows phone which I guess is possible considering there are Atom based tablets that are pretty mobile running full Windows 8. I am not sure if it is possible to run a phone that doesn't totally over heat yet without a ARM processor but it would definitely be interesting. Battery life would still be a problem as well I believe."

Our Daniel published a superb article the other day that looked at issues with Windows Phone. But what do you guys think? Have 8 suggestions of your own to add to the already expanding pool? Head on over to the "8 things that Microsoft need to fix in Windows Phone right now" thread and add your suggestions and thoughts.

From the Forums: Jessica Alba or Alicia Keys, x86 Windows Phones and suggestions

according to anandtech they are slightly faster and offer the same amount of heat/power as arm (s4 in particular) these of course are single cores with hypertreading vs an actual dual core. This is pre haswell/broadwell based so in the near future we might be seeing faster with the same power draw.

Clover trail+ is dual core and releases soon. First phone is Lenovo K900 Android. Bay trail quad core is coming for devices this holiday and is 22nm (unmatchable). Windows Phone should jump on while it is still small.

I agree. If Intel can manage a few OEM design wins in the mobile market (they've had a few insignificant ones), I believe the market will shift to Intel parts.

Arm dosen't have anything on the horizon that can match Haswell on performance per watt. It's just a matter of getting OEM's to use Intel parts and the platforms to allow developers to target a single platform independent codebase. The stores can then transparently recompile, build and deliver the version of software a customer needs based on the hardware they're running.

Intel worked with Google, and refactored Android to allow it to build on x86, which is great. However, many existing apps won't build for it unless specific things are changed for those apps. Meaning that it requires developers to get involved to enable x86 support. Which is why Intel built an emulator -- which doesn't work real well from what I understand -- to allow apps to run that can't be rebuilt for naitive support. The exact reason eludes me at the moment, but it has something to do apps built to target Dalvik or AOSP, I forget which.

Hopefully MS has forseen these potential issues, since the bulk of their experience is with x86. Only time will tell.

Alba was brought on stage to demonstrate how the device works for her. Whether she was paid or not and whether not her explanation was shaky, she is still seen in the public using the phone months after that launch event. I think she even updates her photos on facebook with her 920.

Alicia Keys being "hired" as a Creative Director is corny and then have it as their "oh, one more thing" moment makes it even more cornier. She will fade away and nobody will ever know she was a black berry "employee".

As an Acer W510 owner, I wouldnt mind seeing an intel based windows phone. The atom porocessor does a fairly good job with my Acer (after a couple critical updates). Very stable and performance is always great, and dont have any over heating issues, not too good with games though. But would love to see how they would approach the windows phone ecosystem.

Agreed, Intel could snap a lot from the Dragon! Smaller Nano Meters is probably going to be the biggest player in battery life for the mobile market as well as lower chip temps. I am sure Intel has already got someone to play with unless they are making their own phone!

Intel only has AMD as competition, for the last 3 years Intel has been top dog with i7-2700k, i7-3770k, i7-4770k and all have the same clock speed of 3.5GHz and all are Quad-Core only! Intel proved the world that it doesn't need 4GHz+ clock speed and Octa-Core processor's to stay fast! And the fastest CPU to date. This why AMD is moving to ARMv8 technology to get away from Intel's x86 technology.

A year from now Intel has 14nm with Broadwell microarchitecture game over AMD in the PC market!

With the 22nm Atom out this year and the 14nm Atom a year later....bye bye ARMv8 competition!